Tom Furman at Physical Strategies has a great post up, The Thin Red Line, which describes an elegant method for staying on track using a wall calendar and magic marker. Inspired by Jerry Seinfeld, believe it or not.

Just two quick links:

• CrossFit Journal: A New, Rather Long Analysis of the Deadlift by Mark Rippetoe.
• CrossFit Oakland on Jack LaLanne.

Ross Enamait just posted an article and video, "The Homemade Wheel." Definitely an inexpensive piece of equipment worth making, as it's good for a variety of truly killer exercises. And as always, Ross's video is very impressive. Check it out.

If you have access to a rower, here's a workout I run through when I'm strapped for time. With 30 seconds rest between each interval, row:

100m
200m
300m
400m
500m
400m
300m
200m
100m

Last time I set an average 500m pace of 1:43. I think I can do better, but that was a pretty good workout.

It's a bonus if you can set up this workout on a C2 rower, as you can program the distances and the rest intervals into the monitor, and it forces you to be honest on the rest time. Once the rest is over, the clock starts ticking on your interval time, and any time spent dead in the "water" REALLY hurts your average.

Ross Enamait just posted a Nike commercial that vaulted into my top five. Don't ask me what the other four are, because then I'd have to start YouTubing them and my workday would be shot.

This T-Nation article, The Third-World Squat, is the second time I've seen this particular stretch touted. First time was at the end of Mark Sisson's beach sprints video (more sensitively referred to as the Indigenous People Stretch). The Crossfit boards also picked up on these articles. Anyway, it's definitely one of the perfect stretches. Hits a lot of different muscle groups, proficiency will help with form/flexibility issues you might run into squatting or deadlifting, and you don't need a lot of room. I like to get out of my office chair every once in awhile, squat for a bit, then hit the camel pose (watch your back on this one, esp. doing it cold). To me this combination seems like the quickest and most efficient way to stretch out a lot of the stuff that shortens up when you spend too much time sitting.

Oh, one tip I don't think anybody has mentioned regarding the squat: if you can't get low while keeping your heels down you can roll up a towel and put it under your heels. That'll make it easier to get lower. After a few days, as you get comfortable, unroll the towel a bit. Repeat until you don't need the towel any more.

I read this—could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?—and immediately ordered the book it came from, Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan.

Sorry, been sitting on some of these links for a while...

• Ringtraining's come out with new, improved rings: Elite Rings II. Lovely. I still have my metal version 1.0 ones. These new ones look great, , especially in black (not shown, on that page, but available on ordering). Related, this Crossfit London muscle-up tutorial. Some great exercises demonstrated within. Not sure why the page repeats itself over and over.
• This article makes squash sound like a blast. A good read, but when I check out some squash highlights on YouTube, my enthusiasm dampened a bit. Not a good spectator sport, apparently.
• Conditioning Research embeds a video of a huge jump. My goodness.
• First time poster maverick10 shared a link to the Eccentric Exercise Protocol weblog:

  I developed tendinitis in mid-2004 after doing a lot of bicycling over a period of two weeks. The inflammation went away after some time, but I continued to have pain that lasted for several years. After trying everything from accupuncture, physical therapy, massage, chiropractors, pain drugs, lidoderm patches, ointments, etc... the only thing that significantly reduced my pain was "eccentric exercises." I learned about such exercises through reading medical journal articles. However, I had to develop a protocol that worked for me through trial-and-error.

  Ties in perfectly with what I know about fixing achilles tendonitis.

Art De Vany, Proof of Concept:

I want to show that the conventional wisdom that aging causes a decline in muscle mass, increased obesity, a fall in testosterone, and an unfavorable alteration of blood lipids is not true. So, what are the relevant facts?

Great to read following on the heels of the Sisson post on aging I mentioned recently.

I was reading this great rant by Ross Enamait, Examining The Google-Bot Trainer, and noticed in it he mentioned St. Wilhelm's Nondenominational Church of S&P and their Ten Commandments. Excellent, had to check out the rest of their site:

Though we call ourselves a church, we have no religious affiliations. Strength and Power is our religion. We do not have a physical building. There are no meetings or agendas. Membership is merely an honor bestowed upon you through good faith. Our hope is that the church will grow large enough that each member, at some point in their life, will pass a complete stranger on the street wearing a Saint Wilhelm's t-shirt and they will instantly know that this person has done something great, whether it be in competition or by simply achieving a hard-earned personal goal.

If you think yourself worthy to join, you must promise that once you receive your member's t-shirt, you will make a video of yourself doing something great while wearing the shirt. You may record yourself doing a gym lift, beating someone up (in organized competition, of course), crushing objects, or performing any number of strength feats.

The church recognizes Ross as a saint. :-)

Core77 does the best holiday gift guide.

I have nothing to add to what Jason Kottke says in this post. I can't stop watching it either. Not sure what that says about me. Read, watch, enjoy (?).